Theater review: Lincoln and Booth at the theater -- this will end well

Lincoln, Booth and the theater have had a troubled history, but in the hands of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks they're just moving parts in a dazzling shell game. It's been 10 years since Parks became the first (and to date, only) African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama with her tragicomedy "Topdog/Underdog," and Marin Theatre Company marks the occasion with a sharp and haunting production directed by Timothy Douglas.

It's a provocative and haunting play concerning two African-American brothers named, worrisomely, Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln has a job playing his presidential namesake in whiteface at an arcade, where people pay money to shoot him, a concept that Parks explored previously with a different Honest Abe impersonator in "The America Play." The Lincoln of "Topdog" used to be an expert three-card monte hustler — playing the common modern variation of the ancient shell game that purports to be a challenge of whether the hand is faster than the eye but is rigged to be unwinnable when money's on the line — but he swore off the cards years ago. Now Booth wants to learn to "throw the cards" like his big brother, but Lincoln refuses to teach him. Since Lincoln's wife left him, he's been sleeping in the recliner in Booth's tiny rented room, bringing home his weekly paycheck while Booth shoplifts fancy clothes and other luxury items.

Set designer Mikiko Uesugi creates a squalid single room with dingy walls, tattered curtains, clothes heaped on the floor and a giant mound of girlie magazines under the bed. Above the room hang American flags and bunting, but in shades of gray rather than red, white and blue. Composer and sound designer Chris Houston builds tension with effectively ominous hip-hop-informed beats and upbeat jazz.

Biko Eisen-Martin's Booth (who insists on being called "3-Card" despite his lack of prowess with the cards) has charm working overtime, constantly undermined by his own confrontational jumpiness. If anything he's too charismatic, more convincing in his flash and swagger than in the frustrated insecurity that makes him put on that front. If you didn't know better, you'd think he's right about being a young hotshot whose time has come.

Despite his rash cockiness and nervous energy, he's not noticeably clumsy with either the cards or the patter, which makes it ring false when Lincoln says Booth has two left hands. What makes us believe that Booth's still too green to hustle is the fact that he still believes that you win some and you lose some, and that a sharp-eyed mark can beat you. That demonstrates that he doesn't really understand the con at all, even if he can re-create the patter and the motions.

Bowman Wright is smoother and more low-key as Lincoln, giving the air of a man who's long since accepted so many slights and calamities that he doesn't trouble himself with them anymore. The only thing that gets him nervous is the prospect of losing his job to a wax dummy, so he practices his presidential death throes at home. His monologue about listening for wannabe assassins to walk up behind him is chilling, and the unhurried grace with which he delivers his three-card spiel shows unflappable assurance.

Although they're often lounging around in their underwear, costume designer Callie Floor gives both brothers sharp suits, boosted by Booth in a comical sequence where he pulls an impressive haul of dress coats out from under his winter coat, and Lincoln's Honest Abe costume is amusingly rumpled and worn.

All taking place in one room with no other characters (not even the girlfriend Booth is always bragging about), the play unfolds masterfully, with bits and pieces of the brothers' personal history and struggle to keep their modest place in the world spilling out whenever they let their guard down enough to stop boasting and needling each other. Parks' flair for language is tremendous, and while the dialogue is often funny (often at the same time that it's deeply disturbing), all that talking slowly builds in intensity until the stakes are startlingly high.

The repetition of the long stream of patter that accompanies the hustle — over and over with only the smallest variations — does become tedious, but then it moves beyond that and grows hypnotic, like a mantra or magical incantation. The only trouble, and it's a considerable one, is that when the play's climax comes it feels abrupt and somewhat out of the blue, unsupported by the characterizations that have gone before. That's not a flaw in the text so much as the way it's been played. The staging and performances are terrifically compelling throughout, but there's a turbulent undercurrent needed to build up to the end that just isn't there yet. Other than that, Mr. Lincoln, it's a heck of a play.